‘Grand Theft Auto’ Maker Rockstar Games Asks Workers to Return to Office Five Days a Week
‘Grand Theft Auto’ Maker Rockstar Games Asks Workers to Return to Office Five Days a Week
Rockstar Games, a division of Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., will ask employees to return to the office five days a week beginning in April as the video-game maker enters the final stages of development on its next game, the hotly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI.
Someone wants to lay people off without the headline "Grand Theft Auto Dev Lays Off 200 Employees"
80Return to office is the modern day silent layoff
45Although, it seems a lot of places lately are saying the silent part out loud.
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You know, I really thought that the pandemic might have been the beginning of a paradigm shift. It was a terrible time, but I think a good majority of people were beginning to realize just how insane our world was and we all slowed down for a second and realized that we don’t need to be in the office 5 days a week. Welp, I guess I shouldn’t have been so damn naive. Employers decided that they couldn’t micromanage as efficiently as they wanted and those millions of dollars of real estate weren’t going to pay for themselves. Now it’s amazing how much our “cOmPaNy CuLtUrE” needs improvement or how collaboration just “iSnT aS gOoD” as face to face. Fuck you all, it’s money and control, plain and simple.
62As someone who has been remote for 8+ years, it's extra disconcerting that now some companies are more in the office than they were even before covid. It's totally about control as you said. I'm at least hoping that it eventually returns to where it was.
23What I find very disconcerting is that some companies don't own real state, they rent it. A commercial space in NY size of a garage costs like 70K per month! So these companies had the golden opportunity to pocket this money, to make their employees happy, help the environment, improve the traffic in the city and get talent from anywhere in the country, but said "nah thanks, I prefer to spend my time micromanaging my employees".
What is wrong with these people? Our generation needs to create better, smarter companies and make these dinosaurs irrelevant.
12It has been the beginning of a paradigm shift. This is just to lay people off without paying severance.
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I've been remote for close to 10 years. In that time, I've had more personal and professional growth than I ever did the 10 before. There's no conditions that would compel me back to an office with any regularity. These line goes up sociopaths are a lot more bearable over zoom and I'd like to keep it that way.
37IDK, I value in office work for ~2 days/week, in person collaboration just generally works better for certain things. But I also get less of my own work done when in the office, so a mix is usually best.
And that's what my company's policy is: soft two-days in office, hard three days remote. We have four remote team members out of 20 or so, and we fly them out every few months for a week at a time for project kickoffs and whatnot.
But five days in office mandatory makes no sense. The only explanation imo is a lack of trust from management of their employees, and that's not a productive environment to be in. If you don't trust your employee, why do you keep paying them? Build a team based on trust and let the team decide their office schedule.
5You'll get downvoted here but I agree with you, personally I get value out of 2 days a week in office. Otherwise I become antisocial and a bit of a hermit.
However, that's just me, and anymore and I wouldn't be productive. The important thing is that it should be a team level decision (NOT a top down decision) and hopefully a personal one. How people find that they're most productive should be up to them.
I've never understood any arguments against that. It always boils down to "But how do we know they're working" which means "I am an incapable manager who doesn't know how to manage"
11You can value it, but that doesn't mean it should be mandatory for everyone. When I have to go to the office my day is lost, not just because I'm not productive in the office, but also because I can't do anything for myself. Also half of my team works 8 timezones away, our manager lives 4 timezones away, unless half the team gets on a transatlantic plane the more tram won't be in the same office, how is making people go to two different offices in three different timezones twice a week going to help collaboration?
7I absolutely appreciate that schedule works for you and can see the personal benefits. However, we have such a diversified work force thanks to things like complete remote, I still would like for companies to error on the side of what provides the best performance and quality of life.
I understand that's a utopian ideal and don't expect it to ever be reality, just wish that it would be manifested better before I once again see amazing talent lost to middle managements inability to evolve. Especially in markets that this type of action should be entirely voluntary.
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I'm waiting for a headline that's "game dev asks workers to return to office 7 days a week".
27All of a sudden I'm a little less interested in giving Rockstar my money...
23"Cracking the whip is no fun if we can't see the fear in our wage slaves' eyes as we do it, and besides, we want you to experience
workplace culturecrunch directly and fully, in a crowded office and not a comfort of your own home." - Rockstar executives, probably.23Feels safe to assume as we get closer to GTA6 the more people they'll cut to maximize profits on it. Everyone knows it's highly likely to be up there with 5 on sales however they know not to just do a massive layoff as it would effect sales. With online being a key money maker the devs in that department are probably the only ones that are "safe".
8Not sure which cynical take to go with here. Either they want to get people to quit without the bad press of laying people off or they know the industry is turbulent enough that no one would actually push back against going back into the office for work that could be done remotely.
2Yay I love paywalled articles /s
0I was going to say 12 foot ladder, but that doesnt work. Does anyone have a similar site that would do the job?
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Oh God. The humanity...
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